Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakening was a dark tale that had the detective taking on the Cthulu from H.P. Lovecraft’s beloved mythos. Now, in Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, the hero is taking on another character of literary fame, the thief Arsene Lupin from the novels of Maurice Leblanc. Whereas the previous crossover into the world of H.P. Lovecraft was a bit darker than many are used to when it comes to the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis is a bit more of a traditional adventure. The game’s point-and-click style should be immediately familiar for fans of adventure games, while the puzzles are challenging and often creative. Although the game can be repetitious at times, it’s still a solid adventure game that Sherlock Holmes fans should enjoy.

Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis follows the titular character and his associate, Dr. Watson, as they try to prevent the famous thief, Arsene Lupin, from stealing some of England’s most valuable treasures. As Holmes, you’ll search through a variety of well-known locales throughout England, finding clues, solving puzzles, and tracking down Lupin.

The game does a fine job of presenting the world. While the graphics aren’t quite as good as many PC titles out there, you can still get a good sense of the environments and historical landmarks.

The puzzles are quite difficult, giving adventure fans a run for their money. Most of them are logic based, requiring a good deal of thought in order to progress. They might not be appropriate for everyone, considering how tough they can be, but hardcore adventure fans should enjoy the challenge.

Unfortunately, there are a few caveats with the puzzle system. For starters, it requires a lot of backtracking and covering old ground. You’ll constantly have to be returning to certain areas and then returning to where you where. The back and forth runaround can be pretty cumbersome, and does hurt the overall flow.

Additionally, the flow of the game is quite linear. The way the story unfolds, it’s really hard not to see the developers holding your hand as you take on the various puzzles and plot elements.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good, but isn’t quite the best looking game out there. The character models look pretty simplistic, and the animations aren’t quite up to snuff, but luckily the environments look pretty good. The upside of this is that the game will run on a variety of PC configurations.

The sound is a bit of a mixed bag. While the music is fantastic and does well with the game’s theme, the dialogue is stiff and monotone, which is especially unfortunate considering just how much of it there is.

While Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis certainly has some problems, the puzzles are nicely challenging, and should provide adventure fans with some great brain-benders. All things considered, Nemesis is a solid adventure title that should appeal to fans of Baker Street’s most famous detective.

Gameplay: 7.5
Nemesis features some challenging puzzles and a great representation of its environments. Unfortunately, there is an awful lot of backtracking required to get through the linear storyline.

Graphics: 7.0
The environments look pretty good, but the character models and animations are simplistic and stiff.

Sound: 7.0
The games soundtrack is great and fits well with the gameplay, but the dialogue sounds phoned in.

Difficulty: Hard

Concept: 7.5
Nemesis’ cat-and-mouse storyline does a good job of representing the two main characters’ respective strengths.

Overall: 7.3
Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis is a solid adventure game with some truly challenging puzzles. While there are some gameplay problems here and there, the game should appeal to hardcore fans of Sherlock Holmes.